


There's no such thing as luck, baby

by mee4ever



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Beating, Captivity, Dark Harry, Deathly Hallows AU, M/M, Or something of the sort, POV Draco Malfoy, Post-Half-Blood Prince, Rape/Non-con Elements, Running Away, Sexual Abuse, Stockholm Syndrome, Torture, Unforgivable Curses (Harry Potter)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-21
Updated: 2017-03-21
Packaged: 2018-10-08 10:38:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,290
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10384809
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mee4ever/pseuds/mee4ever
Summary: Draco thought it was luck that brought him to the Golden trio after having escaped the clutches of the Dark Lord, but when days of imprisonments turns into days of torture, he is starting to believe maybe he simply walked out of one nightmare and into another.Or the one where the Golden Trio holds Draco prisoner to gain information about Voldemort's plans and Harry turns to drastic measures to find the truth.





	

**Author's Note:**

> My wonderful [Lovi](http://crybabydraco.tumblr.com) prompted, helped plotting, and generally helped whenever I was at loss. My rock, my bestie, I hope this was what you were looking for. 
> 
> [idioticintentions](http://idioticintentions.tumblr.com) has beta read, thank you for that!  
> Any and all remaining mistakes are entierly my own and if you find any, you're welcome to point them out so I can fix! 
> 
> As the tags suggest, this is a way darker fic than I've ever written before. If you want to know specifics before reading, please feel free to contact me. Otherwise, be safe and do not read if you're uncertain.

It is fall, Draco realises when it is too late. He’s been gone for hours already and someone surely must have noticed, which means there’s no way for him to turn back for better clothes, better shoes, better anything. It is too late to return, period.

There’s a part of him that still wants to go back, to plead for forgiveness, for all it was was a moment of weakness, a stupid idea that maybe he could hunt down the Boy Who Lived himself, even if saying so would be a lie they would all see straight through. Draco is not hunting anyone. He is a deer just out of reach of the torch, his heart in his ears as he waits for the lights to hit him and for him to be found. He’s a breath away from a green curse between his eyes. Just by being here, he’s afraid he’s already doomed his parents to the same fate. What keeps him going is the irrevocable fact that he knows they want him to be nowhere else. For him to be able to live, shall they not.

But he hasn’t planned for this. He has thought about it; again and again and again, but when the opportunity came, he’d only seized his chance, he’d only left, without as much as a thought about making it afterwards. With his wand, his wits and his suit jacket as his only protection in the bitter autumn night, Draco Malfoy is on the run.

He had run at first. Unable to apparate inside of the Manor’s grounds because it would set off all the alarms, he’d known he had to make it to the border before he could even think about where to go next, where to hide. He’d darted in the direction he’s known since birth to be the closest to the edge of their lands, at least this way was not in any way guarded but the Malfoy landscape holds far many more hectare than Draco dares to think about. What laid before him were woods, barren grounds and a black night to navigate his way through it.

Draco had been what you would call an “indoor child”. Not purely by choice, but enough so that he never challenged his parents' dislike of nature and being in it. After years and years of despising the forest around him, now Draco found that he had to agree with it to survive. The problem was: he didn’t know how to. He didn’t know how to run between exposed tree roots, he did not know how to shy away from thin branches, he did not know how to keep quiet in it all. What saved him, was his ability to read the stars. It was almost funny how Sirius would be the one to guide him, the one to lead him away from his family as the man had done before him, and also lead him into the hands of what would come to be his ruination, as well as salvation.

It didn’t take long before Draco was exhausted. Flying being his only exercise of choice, and a broom hadn’t been found in the Manor for a long time, Draco was simply not fit enough for a voyage like this one. The running had turned into speeded walking which in turn had changed into a slow tread only hours after his departure before the sun had even set. He had not dared to stop, but he had felt at a loss, he’d felt exhaustion in a way he’d never experienced before. It was only him and his thoughts left, there was only him inside his brain and not some psychopath who never trusted a single word Draco said without seeing it for himself. It was not lonely, being alone, but it was unfamiliar. Draco had always been surrounded by people, and it didn’t matter if it was family or friends or classmates or Death Eaters. This, he realised, was the first time he was completely by himself in such a long time that he didn’t remember when he had been last.

By the time Draco goes through the invisible force field that holds the Manor grounds under lock and key, he is more stumbling than anything else. Had he not gone through that so many times in his life, he would’ve never felt the difference, but now, it’s like he can finally breathe and for the first time since that night in the astronomy tower when he failed to kill Dumbledore, he cries. He lets himself feel and what he feels is unwordable, it is unspeakable, it is too much and it’s too big for him. Muffling his deep sobs with his sleeves, because he’s too tired to even try magic at the moment, he falls back onto the ground and despite willing himself to keep quiet, he can’t. He bites his own hand but he needs to breathe too much, he needs to gulp for air, he needs to make the pain go away somehow.

It doesn’t. But with time, it dulls and when it is a mere faint whisper of what it was, Draco falls asleep on damp ground, under a sky full of people who will hate him for his betrayal.

~~

At first light, he wakes up with a start and he believes he can hear the trees whisper his location. He thinks, if he stays, that somehow the forest will betray him right back. In retrospect, it is an absurd thought but it gets him moving, which is what he needs. His limbs feel frozen when he stands and he wants to say he can’t feel his toes but he feels them too much instead. He starts shaking before he’s even gone ten steps and he thinks that maybe this is how far he’ll get, he’ll just die here of cold and they will find him in spring. But he doesn’t die, and he doesn’t get warm. He just… walks.

It takes him until the sun is clearly visible before he realises that apparition is a thing. He could go anywhere he knows in a blink of an eye and he hasn’t even thought about that today. Before he’s tried choosing a location, though, he realises he doesn’t know many places. He knows of Wiltshire, he knows of London and he knows of Hogwarts and its surroundings; which other places does he know well enough to try and apparate to? In his worn out condition? One day has not even passed and he’s completely fucked. He will have to do better in regards of shelter for the next night, he needs a plan, he needs food, he needs more water, he needs… He _needs_. It’s that easy. He just needs and he doesn’t know how to not need and he doesn’t know how to relieve any of the needs he has. All he managed to grab before leaving was some water and some fruit from a bowl and his stomach tells him that is not enough. It won’t last him two more days. It might not even last him one.

He’s headed northwest. He’s not sure why he’s continued on the same path since he began running, but he doesn’t see a better way so he continues. Doesn’t allow himself to stop, to rest, until the sun has set once more and he’s forced to give into exhaustion, hunger. Sleep, he finds, calms your hunger better than thinking about food but when he wakes, his stomach hollars for a meal he cannot give it. When he tries to stand, it’s of no use and he scrambles to the ground in a whining mess. His limbs feel hollow and he allows himself to eat half his remaining food and drink a third of the water. It won’t get him far, it won’t be enough, but it has to do for now.

He’s not dared to walk anywhere near civilization, although he has seen muggle communities here and there. There’s nothing he can do in them anyway; he has no muggle money (he doesn’t even have Wizarding money), he’s too weak for as advanced magic as obliviation and he doesn’t feel desperate enough to steal. Yet. Maybe in an hour he would literally kill for a sandwich but he hasn’t gone that deep yet.

The escape doesn’t lead him anywhere. Just fields, woods, small roads and then all of a sudden: water. Left and right, there’s water and he can spot the land on the other side but even on his best days, there’s no way Draco would ever consider swimming over. It’s at least a hundred yards and for the first time, Draco plays with the thought of actually talking to muggles.

The water is mocking him, he feels. It’s stopping him, it’s just there and yet he cannot do anything about it. Draco follows it upwards, towards what he hopes is a bridge to cross, or where the water ends.

Ends, the water does not. But a village presents itself. It takes him several tries before he enters on sheer force of will, when standing has now become a triumph.

~~

“Are you quite alright, lad?” Draco looks up to see two older ladies staring down at him. When he looks around, he doesn’t understand the surroundings because he hadn’t realised he was sitting, no less that he did so on the side of a busy street.

Shaking his head, Draco says, “No, I… I don’t know… I think I… got hit. Or something.” It’s a good thing he’s thirsty beyond belief because it makes him unable to think, makes him stutter and he thinks it will sell his rocky story better.

“You look like you’ve been trekking for a week,” the dark haired lady says and it sounds like compassion in her voice. Draco doesn’t even feel bad that he takes advantage.

“I don’t remember.”

“What don’t you remember? Do you know your name, love?”

“Dean,” he says and looks at them again. “Dean Thomas.”

“Okay, Dean,” the blonde says, “what is it that you do not remember?”

“How I got here? Where my keys are? Why I look like I do?”

The dark haired woman has crouched next to Draco. She inspects his pale and dirty face, his shaking hands, his chapped lips. “When was the last time you ate? Drank?” she asks and Draco, exasperated, tells her that he can’t remember that either.

The blonde reaches forward and with a surprisingly firm grasp, hauls him up and despite feeling embarrassed, Draco leans on her for support. “Let’s get you something to eat,” the lady decides and her company agrees, coming up on Draco’s other side and together, the three of them topple into the closest door that says “open”.

Draco finds himself with a plate of fish and chips in a small pub. There are too many sounds, too much of everything, so he closes it all out and devours the food. Gets lost in the salt, in the lemon, in the crunch of chips and deep fried cod, and he can’t think of a single time that he’s enjoyed something so wholeheartedly like he does now. The two ladies stare at him, concerned and slightly wary. He shuts them out for a few minutes as well, now relishing in cold water. It makes him scared for the rest of his journey: there’s no way he’ll be this lucky twice. He definitely needs a better plan, but he’s too caught up in all of this to even be able to process that there is something in the future.

“Could you… I don’t know where I am,” Draco says when his plate is empty and he looks down at the table. It’s awkward, because he’s never liked getting help and now here come two strangers and they just give him food and, with it, misplaced reassurance.

“You’re in Severn Beach, honey,” one of the ladies says. It helps him a lot more than he would’ve thought, because he knows of the Severn bridge, which makes him able to place himself very easily on the map.

“But I,” and Draco fumbles with his knowledge of England; he must be on the east side of the water, and he should probably keep moving west, but what cities are on the other side? Cardiff must be. Chepstow? Newport? Maybe he should just shoot for Gloucester, more north than west but a safer bet. And Pansy lives in Gloucester, doesn’t she? “But I’m from Chepstow,” he says. It’s not ideal, but if he remembers correctly, it’s just on the other side of that goddamned bridge.

“Oh dear,” the first lady says, “you’re on the wrong side of the water!”

“You’re sure you don’t remember how you got here? Not with a friend or driving? Maybe you’ve been in an accident? Should we take you to a hospital?”

Draco shakes his head. “I don’t remember. I think I got hit, someone must’ve stolen my wallet and everything. I don’t even have my keys to my house on me.”

“But you’re sure you’re from Chepstow?”

“Yes, I remember who I am, I just don’t know how I got here.”

They end up getting him a bus ticket. Draco doesn’t know how to thank them other than telling them how grateful he is, because, in reality, the ticket only gets him further into unknown territory and further away from those crisp chips. Draco must also admit that he’s never gone by any sort of public transport before. The only thing he’s ever rode has been a broom or the Hogwarts express, so the ride in itself is an adventure. Firstly he doesn’t understand how to snub his ticket and when he finally sits on the bus, it makes so much sound, it shakes, and he fears he’ll sick in his seat within minutes. There’s no way he can allow himself to be sick, though. He cannot lose the little nutrition he’s been given and the woman in the seat on the opposite side of the aisle looks like one of those people who would ask the driver to kick you off the bus if you stepped out of any sort of line. Barfing, Draco concludes, would most probably be one of those reasons.

~~

The plan is formed by the time he steps foot in Chepstow. He walks north, the water to his right and Parkinson as his goal. He doesn’t know her address, he doesn’t know for certain she really lives in Gloucester or how long it will take him to get there, but he literally can’t see another option, cannot find another plausible way to get out of this alive. His chances are slim, but they feel like chances and it is a welcomed feeling in all of the bitterness and cold. The day has reached its peak and is quickly drawing towards evening when he hits the edge of what looks to be a giant forest. It feels good to enter, it feels almost _safe_. He’s not dying of hunger, he’s a far way from home, he’s soon away from all the strange muggles, he has a _plan_.

The only thing he doesn’t have is shelter for the night, so for the third one in a row, he sleeps out in the cold with nothing to shield him. He doesn’t die while doing it, but the way his muscles scream in the morning, he _wishes_ that he had. If he continues, further into this merciless autumn, he realises that one beautiful day, he won’t wake up.

He can’t smell it, yet, but he must reek. After hour upon hour of walking, he must be a sight and he feels in dire need of a bath as he looks down on his muddy hands. He would use magic if he didn’t think it would take too much energy, and maybe that energy that’s worth putting somewhere else. Keep going.

There’s a steep hill which he’s not sure he will manage to climb down so he takes a second to catch his breath. Without the stars, it’s harder to navigate especially because it’s cloudy but everything he walks off-route in the day, he can always steer right once the night comes around. So he decides to walk right, rather than continuing straight forward which had been the original plan. It’s probably that decision that is the final straw.

~~

His brain short circuits. He doesn’t know if it’s sheer dumb luck or the stars aligning but before him stands now a freaking wizard. Ron Weasley, but a wizard nonetheless. Bent down on his way to pick something off the ground when Draco tumbles into earshot and they stare at each other for what seems like an eternity. Despite being shocked beyond belief, Draco recognizes a wand being drawn on him and he knows that despite having his wand with him, he has no chance of getting it out before the redhead has cast his first spell, so what he does is run. It doesn’t help. He should’ve known. The petrifying spell hits him in the back, wordlessly cast and Draco is only able to clench his jaw, hoping in the swift moment before he falls towards the ground that he won’t break his nose. He’s not sure he’d be able to fix it once the spell wears off, and he’s fairly certain he’ll never let the weasel perform such a delicate art on his face even if the other man for some reason wanted to. There’s a crunching sound when he hits the ground and he wants to scream, but he’s not able to. There have been few instances when he’s felt so utterly helpless.

“You stunned, Malfoy?” the weasel calls out and with that, Draco finds himself again and, if he could, he’d roll his eyes. Like he’d drop like this if he wasn’t. The Weasley boy then calls out for his friends; for _Hermione_ and for _Harry_ and despite himself, Draco feels the sudden rush of hostility towards them all and humiliation of having to be found like this. The two come running, Draco can only hear their footsteps, their panicked voices as they ask what’s wrong. The footsteps stop and Draco realises they must be looking at him, on the ground, motionless and face into the wet leaves.

“He tried to run away!” Weasley defends himself from a quiet question and then all three are standing around him. Then suddenly the world is bright as Draco is rolled onto his back and the silhouettes painted of the hunted trio can almost be described as a sight for sore eyes. They all look like hell, Draco notices. Not because they’re not clean, because they aren’t, but because they look exhausted, haunted, _done_. There’s very little joy spreading around their edges and it would’ve made Draco frown, if he only could. He would’ve thought the three of them could hold strong through anything, on the run or not, but they look… almost splinched. Like they don’t really fit together as they’ve done since first year. It’s in their looks as well; the weasel is missing a couple of fingernails, and of all the skills in Granger’s repertoire, cutting hair doesn’t look to be one of them if Potter’s hair is anything to go by.

“Bloody hell, he looks like shit,” Weasley says and the other two don’t say anything for a long while. Draco would like to tell him that he looks like shit himself, but the curse was a direct hit and will not likely wear off anytime soon. He can only hope that his enemies will release him from the body-bind earlier than that. It doesn’t seem like they know how to act at all. Then they act like he’s not there.

“How long before we can be out of here?” Potter asks.

“Do you think they’ve found us? Is it possible someone else saw the deer too?” Hermione asks.

Their voices are no longer panicked, now they’re simple, flat.

Weasley shakes his head. “Don’t think he had any idea he’d find us here,” he rejects their questions. “He looked as surprised to see me as I was to see him. And look at him, he literally looks like he’s been rolling in mud for a couple of days. He’s not here for us.”

Potter looks down on him, saying, “So what _is_ he doing here?”

~~

They bind and gag him with the Incarcerous spell and fish his wand out of his jacket pocket before they lift the first curse. Draco can’t even enjoy the small freedom of being able to move muscles before he’s hauled up by a chilly Golden Boy and pushed to walk forward, Potter’s hand tight around his upper arm. There are a million questions Draco wants to ask, what deer? why are they acting like three different people rather than a group? why don’t they just let him explain himself? but the muzzle makes it almost impossible to make any sound and the faint memory of his pride would probably have kept his mouth shut anyway.

“We can’t just have him bound in our tent,” Hermione says, and for a second Draco thinks that maybe it means she’ll argue for his release. Only until Potter says they’ll raise their second tent and the conversation once again goes dead. They intend to keep him? Like this? For the first time, Draco feels frightened. He hadn’t run away from being bound by nothing but air to find himself in captivity by actual ropes. The thought makes him want to retch, because these people are supposed to be the _good guys_ , they aren’t supposed to stoop to this kind of treatment, they are supposed to be angry, they are supposed to want explanations or to leave him to his own devices; they sure as hell aren’t supposed to hold someone hostage.

It doesn’t take long for them to reach their obvious campsite; a tiny, beige tent just by an enormous fallen tree, a small fireplace in front of it, but it’s not the site in itself that tells Draco this is where they’ve taken their sanctuary; it’s by the way he gets to see it. Granger casts a silent spell, and suddenly it’s all there. They’ve hidden well, Draco notes, because he can’t even feel it when they step through the invisible protection spells. That Granger knows her magic, Draco must give her that.

She’s also the one to raise that second tent while Potter looks on, and completely ignores Draco except for the ever pressing grip he has on him. It’s unbearably strange to be this close to him, to be completely in his hands, to remember that the last time they were anywhere near this close, Draco was lying on a drenched bathroom floor, bleeding, dying, by the other man’s wand. Suddenly, Potter doesn’t feel like such a “good guy” after all.

Draco stares at Potter and wonders when the Boy Who Lived started to look like a man rather than just that, a boy. He wonders if this war has left himself looking the same; older, more mature, and, even though he has just reached legal adulthood, he probably is worn more than he should be. And the bloody war has merely just begun. Where are they to land when it’s finally over? If they even make it out alive, any of them. If Draco even makes it out of this camp alive. It feels like an absurd thought, but as he’s dragged into the newly lifted tent, and left in chains without another word, the reality of that possibility feels closer than anything else.

~~

It’s hours of silence before someone enters “his” tent again, during which he has time to ponder everything from the beginning of the world to the end of it. A day ago, he was free of tyranny but almost dying in a street in a muggle town, wishing that he didn’t have to associate with any of them, and today he’s hidden away in chains, surrounded by the only wizards for miles and miles and he wishes himself back to Severn Beach in a heartbeat. For a while, he thought about his parents and how distraught they’d be if they knew whose clutches he managed to get himself captured in.

He’s tried escaping four times, calculated all the possible ways for which to overpower one of them and get a hold of his wand, any wand. He’s thought about the fact that he has now no idea of knowing when it is day or night, that if he’s kept here for long, he’ll lose sense of time and he’ll lose sense of himself. He’s wondered whether or not his nose is broken. He’s thought about what’s in his mouth so much that he’s made himself choke on it, tears burning in his eyes before he’s settled back into only having it there.

Granger pulls the canvas to the side to lets herself in, and his fifth attempt to get out starts off with her humanity.

The chains are around his ankles, the ropes around his wrists. By a swipe of her wand, the ropes fall and Draco doesn’t hesitate for a second when he from crouching position, darts forward and manages to knock her to the ground, but she falls away from him, whatever is in her hands falling to the ground She’s crawling away before Draco has time to get another hold of her and the chance is slipping away from him more quickly than water would go down his throat if he was allowed any. They stare at each other, Draco desperate and unhinged because of his failure and Granger shakes, like she hadn’t thought of the fact that he would try something. It’s laughable. Draco decides to sit back down before Granger makes a move to raise herself up, and then she snorts.

“I want to tell you that you should be grateful I’m here at all, that Harry wants to let you starve, but seeing as I have as much say in the very fact that you’re exactly where you are, I don’t think I have the right.” She dusts herself off and picks up what she dropped, which turns out to be dinner. It doesn’t look like much: bread, mushrooms, some dried meat, but it’s more than Draco could’ve ever dreamed of seeing this far into his journey. It makes him disgusted that he _does_ feel grateful. She uses a quiet spell to clear it of the dirt it inevitably caught while being on the ground. Draco hates that he feels grateful about that too.

“I would give you a chair,” she says when she uses her wand to fly the food over to Draco, “but after the stunt you just pulled, I don’t think it’s such a good idea anymore.” That, he doesn’t give the slightest shit about. He isn’t gonna turn prim and proper again just because he can sit on some carved wood. Frankly, he much rather sit on the ground like a savage, because at least that will give no illusion to what is going on here. He reaches for the food before he realises that he cannot eat it and he looks up at the witch again.

“You know this place is sound proofed, within the blockades, nothing finds its way out.” He believes her, so he nods. She nods short, wand raised once more and then Draco can take a breath through his mouth. Once the muzzle is gone, he thinks that he’ll do anything to never have it be there again. He’ll be quiet for the rest of his life if he must. He doesn’t in this moment, remember that he can never shut the fuck up around Harry Potter. Instead, he digs into the food, after giving his very dirty fingers an unpleasant look.

“I’ll get you some water to clean up,” Granger says and leaves. The statement doesn’t make him stop stuffing himself, he doesn’t care at this point. It’s interesting how quickly one loses the things you’ve upheld your whole life. How hunger makes you do things you’ve never before considered. How easily captivity drives you to be a person you never thought you were.

She even brings him a towel, and she heats the water in the bucket. It’s _nice_. He wants to kick her teeth in.

~~

When he wakes up, startled, the trio is around him. On the opposite side of the tent, Potter on a chair turned the wrong way and facing him, Granger on a stool, her side to Draco as she looks at the ginger, who stands leaning against the pillar in the middle, between the other two. The scenario makes him uneasy, how long have they been there? What are they plotting? Draco has never wished more for just some sense of privacy.

“Did you come here alone?” Potter asks after the silence has dragged out long enough for anyone to start feeling uneasy. He does it with a surrendering gesture, like he doesn’t actually want to ask it but rather has to. Draco stays quiet.

“Were you looking for us?” Silence. “Did you have time to contact anyone before Ron stunned you?” Pressing silence. “Have you put us in more trouble than you’re worth?” Thick, awful silence but Draco doesn’t dare to open his mouth. One wrong word is more of a threat than no words at this time. Potter sighs. It is not a relaxing movement. When he looks to Draco again, his green eyes flashes.

Draco has seen the look before: the pure, disturbed outrage; he’s seen it in men that has dined at his father’s table, he’s seen it in Death Eaters, he’s seen it, once, looking back through a mirror, but like that, he’s never seen it in Potter. It’s more than troublesome, because a spark like that is hard to know what it will light on fire. So when Potter makes an effort to stand, Draco opens his mouth and says “no”. He doesn’t want to be scared of Potty or his minions, but the man that is now standing before him is not the same person Draco met in Diagon Alley seven years ago.

“‘No’ what?” he asks, voice barely holding itself steady.

Draco coughs before he continues. “No, I wasn’t looking for you. No, I didn’t contact anyone else.”

“Is anyone going to come look for you?”

“I don’t know.”

“Why were you in the woods?”

“I don’t know.”

The weasel snorts. “He’s obviously lying.” Draco gives him a glance, and he sees Granger nodding in the background. From what Draco can gather, something is obviously up with all of them but now he’s their common enemy, which potentially makes him the only thing that keeps them together, and knowing them, they will do anything to not let go. He wants again to laugh at the absurdity.

Potter comes forward, he crouches in front of Draco, just out of reach and he clasps his hands together as he says, “Again then. Is anyone coming for you?” Draco shakes his head.

“Why were you in the woods?” Draco stays quiet. Potter looks like he wants to slap him. “Are you going to make this more difficult than it has to be?”

“I think you chaining me up in the first place is making things more difficult than they have to be.” He’s surprised to see Potter leaving the tent as he looks up, and the other two exchanging a look before following him.

They all try during the day that follows, comes and goes, asks the same questions, debating outside his tent with voices loud enough so that he can hear them, whether to move or to stay. It seems they settle on staying because they simply do not pack up and leave. Granger comes with food and Draco eats. In a matter of a few short hours, they almost fall into a sort of sickly routine and when nightfall seems to have come, Draco wishes that he would’ve asked them for a heating spell when had the chance.

~~

A few days roll past, with nothing changing except the tone of the trio’s voices, the slyness of Draco’s answers, the length of the silences. A false sense of security sweeps him up, that this is as bad as it’ll get, and that they can’t keep it up forever. Sooner or later, they’ll have to let him go, because they’ll understand that Draco literally has nothing of value to tell them. Any other option, Draco’s mind doesn’t let him evaluate.

He’s left mostly alone, but he can hear more than he thinks they think he can. There’s not much he understands, most of it has to do with an old children's tale, a destroyed locket and the last name of the loony Ravenclaw-girl the trio has befriended. They argue, about these things, a lot. There’s an underlying sense that something is not right with them all, and as more as Draco listens, he can figure out that the weasel has come back after leaving for an unknown period and neither of the other two seem very happy with the fact that he left in the first place. The conversations are sometimes about him, no one really in favour of keeping him but neither is anyone prone to see him released. Those conversations end like all else, hanging in the air with no conclusion.

They, meaning Granger, take decent care of him. He’s not allowed to leave the tent, but she makes sure everything he might need to leave the tent for, he’s able to do cleanly inside. She brings him meals two times a day, probably the same food and rations that they all eat and she makes sure he’s always got water. Judging by the way Potter always glances at the things she’s provided, he does not care for them. If it had just been up to him, Draco believes Potter would’ve starved him into saying the most ridiculous things just for a piece of moldy bread. At least that’s what the Golden Boy lets on, what Draco thinks Potter wants him to believe. In reality, Draco’s not in the slightest sure what Potter is capable of nowadays. But the muggleborn seems resilient on keeping Draco as… _human_ as she possibly can, despite the inhumane circumstances.

At one point when she’s filled up his water, she makes a show of when she places her wand on the table, out of Draco’s immediate reach and then she steps into that reach. She doesn’t say a word, she just picks up the towel and the dips it into the water before she sits down in the dirt, close to him. The damp cloth is then touched to his temple. Draco shies away at first, before he realises what is going on and the next time she raises her hand, he lets her clean his face without moving an inch. He thinks about attacking her again, choking her until she agrees to help him, but he doesn’t think it’ll do him any good. Whatever happens, she must get to her wand to make _anything_ happen and once that far away from him, she doesn’t have to do anything he wants anymore. And for the record, he doesn’t think he’ll survive here without her, so he sits quietly as she dabs his face clean.

She’s pretty, he notes. Something he’s never thought of before, never cared to notice. He doesn’t know why he does now, in the midst of everything here, when looks mean simply jack shit and even if they did, wouldn’t matter in his position anyway. Her eyes never once leave her own working hand, so Draco can study her in peace. This is the girl whom Draco called a mudblood - several times - in front of the whole school, the girl that had once slapped him silly for calling her friend some stupid name, the girl who was the only student in their year to surpass him in class. And look at them now. Both of them: on the run from one of the most powerful wizards of all time, one of them: keeping the other prisoner and one of them: thinking about suffocating the other as she tends to his face. Life sure is funny sometimes.

It only takes her a few minutes to get his face in such a shape she doesn’t care to clean it further. Then she just sits there for a minute, towel in hand, looking at him.

“Can’t you just tell him what he wants to know?” she asks and Draco tries not to act jiggered by the way her voice quivers. When he doesn’t answer, she nods and stands up.

The only reason she gets inside his mind is because she surprises him by trying.

 _Voldemort by the Malfoy dinner table, a view of the Mansion in spring time, his parents at a Christmas party many years ago, “Let me assist you, Draco!”, Blaise Zabini’s naked chest, Draco’s own face in the mirror_ ; and then he forces her out. Bewildered, frantic, he stares her down but all she gives away of her failed invasion is that she lowers her gaze before heading out again. It’s nothing near the Legilimency he’s used to, nothing near the bone-shaking fear he’s felt when the Dark Lord has sunk through his composed layers of Occlumency like they were nothing but whipped cream. Hermione Granger doesn’t do scary all too well. At least, not in the way that Voldemort does. But it’s a clear reminder that Granger is _not_ on his side.

~~

He doesn't understand why she did it until later that day, when the trio is once again all in the tent, suspense in the air, an edge to the couple’s movements but Potter looks calmer than he’s done since Draco stumbled upon them. He understands when Potter raises his wand towards him, that Granger’s attempt to get inside his head was the second to last plan with the intention to get him to tell them what they want to hear. He understands the curse, what it means when Potter casts it, he understands to what extent he - and some parts even the other two - are willing to go in their search for truth, in the search for whatever truth might suit them.

“ _Crucio_.”

The spell doesn’t do any harm at all, it almost leaves a _pleasant_ buzz through Draco’s body. It is safe to say, Draco had not been prepared to be cursed like this but he is happily surprised when it does not do damage.

Then Potter raises his wand again, angrier now, and the second time, Draco isn’t feeling anything near pleasant anymore. It should hit him in the face because that’s where the wand is pointing, but the curse places itself on his spine, curling around his bones and _presses_ his whole body into pain and shock, his limbs folding in on themselves without him being able to stop them, he shakes, he screams. It’s not of terror or suffering, but of stupor that Potter manages to make him ache like this.

He uses it a third time, and it’s worse.

Weasley leaves as Potter yells the word a fourth time.

The fifth time, Draco realises that at some point Potter has walked up to him, and the spell cringes around his nerve endings like it wants him to bend in ways that are simply not possible. He’s crying at this point, the tears silent but he wails as the curse trickles off.

Potter is holding his face in between his fingertips when Draco comes back to the world of the living. His eyes gleam, sickening, but despite himself, the first thought that runs through Draco’s mind as he asks “Ready to talk?” is to spit in his face. Weakness is what holds him from doing it; lack of energy and dread that it would only make matters worse, make Potter _intend_ the spell stronger. He doesn’t know what knockout power it might utilize if Draco not only didn’t do as Potter wished, but also made him even further aggravated.

The first slap leaves Draco stunned. It doesn’t hurt in the near sense as the curse did, but somehow it cuts deeper. It feels like this is the way Potter fights, in his core, in his most desperate times. It’s not with magic or anything he’s learned from a book; no, Potter is one of those who must put his whole self into something and when he slaps Draco again, it’s like he has come to understand it himself. Draco is left to wonder if this fills Potter to the brim, or rather, if it _relieves_ him of aches he’s never before let go of.

The first thing Draco learns when Potter starts using fists, is that Granger is not a coward.

“Harry.” Her voice is cold, yet she doesn’t say it as if to stop him. If she can have him cruciated, she cannot draw the line at a beating; but there’s something. A twinge, a demand. Like in a trance, Potter turns back to her and they exchange a look that can only be described as one of a thousand words, one you cannot have with anyone other than someone that has seen the darkest and purest parts of yourself and has decided to stand by your side.

Draco is unable to read what they’re saying, partly because he can only see Granger’s face but also because he has never really seen any such parts of her. But when Potter turns to him again, the light in his eyes is dead. He looks comfortably numb, and he stands. Everything in Draco’s body hurts, but he scrambles backwards as fast as he possibly can because even if it’s an unlikely event, Draco doesn’t want Potter to be able to kick him.

~~

That night, Draco doesn’t sleep. He’s never been so tired in his entire life, but every time he considered closing his eyes, he pictures Potter back in the tent, wand or fist raised, just waiting for Draco to relax enough to hit him with a bomb. What’s most astonishing to Draco, though, is that he didn’t actually say anything. He would’ve thought he’d break rather easily because he’s been scared of pain for so long, but once it had all started it was like… it made him more resilient.

~~

Potter almost always starts with his hand open, palm to Draco’s cheek and works his way into heavy blows. It’s some sort of comfort to be found in that, of the build up from an almost feeble beginning to the wrecking end. It’s always the last punch that hits the hardest and when it has been delivered, Potter takes up to a couple of minutes of contemplation of his creation before he leaves it for someone else to tend to. It, being a human in the shape of Draco Malfoy, is practically starting to get used to the way Potter’s knuckles feel against his face even if it has not been so many days. But there’s been plenty enough.

~~

One day, Granger tries getting Weasley to fix him up, but the fragile man looks green just seeing the blood gushing out of Draco’s nose. In the end, he goes to fetch Granger anyway. Draco mocks him when they get back, has to get his girlfriend just to clean up the prisoner. They get too worked up over the fact that they aren’t, in fact, a couple, to register that Draco talks back to them. Any time he has tried to do so towards Potter, the other man has only gotten riled up, but the two of them don't seem to find it strange or otherwise upsetting.

When Draco asks a serious question to Granger a day later, that seems to strike her harder.

“Do you… get any news to this place?”

Startled, she drops her supplies onto the table. She turns to him. “What?”

“News, from family, friends. About… things.” He doesn’t want to ask outright, he doesn’t want to seem too desperate, but the thought has haunted him for many days now.

Granger sighs and half-shrugs. “We would’ve heard if someone was dead.”

“How about someone on the, well, _other_ side?”

“Someone who’s already dead?”

He wants to slap her for jumping to such a stupid conclusion. “My parents,” he quickly clarifies instead. “Would you know it, if my parents were dead?”

Surprised, she shakes her head. “I’m not sure. Probably not. Immediate emergencies only, you see.”

Then she goes back to her things and Draco cannot help but feel disappointed. Granger had been his only hope in the matter. She breaks his thoughts by snapping his nose back in place. He cries out, and she murmurs that Harry shouldn’t go so far all the time. Quietly, Draco agrees, and furthermore thinks that maybe he shouldn't even put himself in a position where he can go too far. Shouldn't be allowed to be able to go that far. Quietly, Draco lets her clean his face off once more, debating whether or not to ask something else, anything. Ask something of her. Quietly, Draco watches Granger as she packs her stuff and walks away again.

When it’s almost too late, he gives in. “You could stop him.”

Pausing and turning in the doorway, she looks almost saddened when she replies, “I’m not so sure that I could.”

~~

Why Draco does it, he’s not sure of himself, but the next day when Potter inevitably finds his way into the tent, Draco decides to see what happens if Draco plays his own game rather than Potter’s. It begins with Draco lying on the ground, rather close to the canvas, and him staying there. He’s supposed to walk as far as his bonds will allow and drop down so that Potter doesn’t have to be in further reach than he has to and then, he’s just supposed to take it. Draco has done so, been very pliable, accepted that it would mean the least amount of pain, but today he’s tired of it. Let Potter come to him, let Potter see that Draco’s not just some puppet he can play. Let’s show Potter that Draco Malfoy is still in this body and that he’s not ready to let go of him just yet.

“Get up,” Potter says and he sounds irritated to even have to. Draco has adapted to the Golden Boy’s manners far too easily, if he’s so expected to do what he’s not even told.

“I’m quite comfortable, thanks for asking,” Draco replies, closes his eyes and puts his hands beneath his head, to show even further that he’s not getting up anytime soon. The silence is disturbing, but Draco doesn’t open his eyes to see what the other man is doing, what he’s thinking.

“Get. The fuck. Up.”

“I’d consider it if you’d ask nicely,” Draco laughs. “But then again, asking isn’t the way of someone who’s gotten used to having everything handed to him, is it?” Finally, he must look at Potter, see what troubles he’s talked himself into.

“You think this is funny?” Potter asks, shoulders square, hand gripping his stolen wand.

Draco slits his eyes, and his voice is ice when he says, “I _did_ just laugh, if you didn't hear.”

“You better get your arse over here or-”

“Or what? What, Potter, will you do? What will you do that you have not already done, that I’ve not already taken?” Potter is virtually boiling but Draco feels oddly calm. When Potter throws the wand away like it’s trash that he does not need, the feeling evaporates. It’s replaced by a tightness over his chest, a rapid heart and Harry Potter choking him.

It feels like power, like hunger. Like Potter is starving and he’s ravishing in Draco. On the floor, Draco feels way less in control than he’s ever done and even if his usual control is very questionable at best, at least he doesn’t feel as helpless as this. At least he can usually breathe. He wishes desperately he’d just rolled with their newfound status quo instead.

For the first time, Draco touches Potter. Both his hands surges up to Potter’s wrists in a desperate but useless attempt to get him to stop; he withers, feeling the lack of oxygen within seconds and his whole body jerks, over and over. It’s when he stops moving, just before he loses himself in dark fog, that he feels it. He cannot be sure, he might be delirious, it might be the angle, it might just be him trying to find a small chance out of this jarring situation, but he’s almost completely certain that Potter is hard. Turned on. And before he passes out, Draco has the time to start wondering, if maybe Potter is also craving something entirely different.

~~

Raised voices are what wakes him. He’s pretty sure he hasn’t been out for long, because the argument seems to have just started. Draco coughs, his whole face hurting, his throat feeling like a bent straw, his head hammers. He’s exactly where Potter left him, on his back, deep in the dirt, still wishing he had never acted out.

From what he is able to gather from the yelling match outside, Granger seems displeased over the fact that Potter _really_ tried to kill him. Draco can’t make out if it’s because of morals, or the fact that he’s of no use to them dead. In truth, they must’ve realised long ago that he’s of no use to them alive either. They just haven’t admitted to themselves that that’s the case yet. Every day they insist on not admitting that, is another day Draco is closer to either insanity or a shallow grave. He touches his neck and Pansy comes to mind, that time she’d told him that she likes to choke her partners in bed. How she at sixteen had had time, courage and experience enough to know of such, Draco doesn’t know but it takes his thoughts towards his best friend instead of this miserable situation and he reminiscences for a few minutes in memories of her.

It’s with a start and a clear wake-up call, that he realises and remembers exactly why he thought about getting turned on by choking someone in the first place.

~~

The proposition he wants to suggest is one he does not know how to approach. He’s equally sure and unsure of how his proposal will be taken and resolved, and the sensical part of him wants to just forget all about it so he won’t put himself into the ground for reading the wrong signals. But the other part: it wants to take a chance, a risk, to eliminate as much suffering as possible, and this, could be the answer to that.

Even though him looking into the ground is supposed to be a subordinate act, Potter takes it as defiance and he grabs Draco’s face to turn his gaze up.

“Look at me when I talk to you,” he says afterwards, like giving Draco the benefit of a doubt to follow orders just isn’t an option anymore, despite Draco’s immediate obedience to place himself where Potter wants him as Potter had walked in.

“You got us both in trouble last time,” Potter says and he strikes him lightly across his temple for emphasis. “And you will not do it again.” Another slap, harder. “Is that clear?”

Draco thinks again about his proposal, maybe he’s wrong, and he responds with, “It is,” from squeezed lips. Maybe he’s right, and it’s not just choking that makes Potter’s veins light fires of lust. Maybe it is dominance, forceful dominance. Potter lets go of his face and gives him a palm across it that hurts like a thousand needles.

“Glad that’s sorted,” he says and raises his hand once more.

Draco thinks that it's now or he’s never gonna have the nerve to do it. “Potter,” he starts, with his hands suddenly clasped around Potter’s calves, and the blow doesn’t come. “I could,” he says but he still doesn’t know how to formulate the sentence. “I can…” It doesn’t work, and he can feel the other man’s patience run thin, so he does the only thing he knows. He moves his hands, upwards, towards the front and over Potter’s thighs, finally settling on his buckle and he pries it open. Potter stands completely still, hardly breathing and when Draco reaches into his pants, he finds Potter like he’d expected; aroused. Straining against his underwear and Draco doesn’t waste time trying to decipher whether Potter’s lack of reaction is good or bad before he unclothes Potter further, and gets to work.

With a gasp, Potter recoils, but only slightly, and only that one time. By the next gasp, he stays put.

It’s insane, to find himself sucking Harry Potter off instead of being beaten by the same man, in a tent in the middle of nowhere England, but that doesn’t stop him. Draco knows this, how to do it, and Potter has clearly never been on the receiving end before and it seems this is an alternative to what would’ve otherwise come. Draco cannot say that he enjoys or likes this, but it clearly wins over getting his face messed up again.

He pretends to forget that, under _very_ different circumstances, he’s thought about doing this before.

The only reason, Draco thinks, that Potter isn’t grabbing at Draco’s hair to make him go faster or deeper; is because his brain has yet to process it as an option. He’s still stuck on the fact that he’s getting something he’s clearly wanted but possibly not understood that he did, or that it was something he could actually have. Draco will endure this better if it’s done on his terms, so he makes sure to give it all he's got, makes sure to work the other man right up until that edge and masterfully tip him over it.

And then he leaves Potter the way he’d started: barely breathing, pants on and Draco’s eyes lowered and his hands around Potter’s calves, waiting for the next thing to happen.

It’s with a slap that leaves Draco’s ear ringing for hours that he walks away, but as he has done so, Draco realises that this is the least amount of pain he has suffered by Potter’s hand since the first time he’d laid them on him.

~~

When Granger walks in some time later, she doesn’t seem to be able to look away from his face. He understands that seeing him looking like he should, rather than how he has been looking for over a week, must be strange. Even Draco, who can’t see his own face, thinks it strange. Although, he can feel the difference. He doesn’t ache other than his cheek, and today’s session left him with nothing but weakened hearing.

Slowly, she walks up to him and hesitantly asks, “Did you… did you tell him something?”

Draco laughs, short and unamused. “I think you would’ve been briefed, had I said anything other than “piss off” or a variant of such.”

Granger opens her mouth to reply a couple of times before, “So why…?” finally comes out.

Shrugging, Draco answers, “Maybe it was a good day. Maybe he hurt his pinky. Maybe he thought better of it; frankly, Granger, I don’t give the slightest damn. If you want to know why he didn’t beat the living shit out of me, please ask _him._  I rather you left me alone to be whole and healed, without magic for once, in peace.”

~~

It feels more like a game and less like what it really is when their next session comes around. Potter prances in, and Draco is pacing as he does so. They watch one another, taking a few steps around each other like a matador and a bull would measure up their opponent before attacking. Draco is fairly certain he’s always been the bull in this scenario, but something about the madness Potter emits makes Draco naively believe that, maybe this once, he himself has the favorable position with the sword in his hand.

With lips plump and reddened after what looks like hours of worrying them, Potter dangerously demands, “Do it again.” Both of them come to a halt, Draco in front of Potter, their gazes locked. Because this is new territory there are fewer rules, there’s less expectancy, there’s more reason for Draco make whatever he can out of the situation.

“If I do, will you stop hitting me?”

If Potter can be dangerous, so can Draco. The act of putting one's limb in someone else's mouth is an act of trust, a trust that in this moment, Potter must realise he cannot put in him. With that question, Draco has changed the game, he’s taken the control from Potter, if even just for a moment, for this brief thing, but it is a victory Draco can’t overlook nonetheless. Potter could say whatever he needs and then do whatever he wants after he’s gotten his way with Draco, but that will inevitably mean he’ll have no luck getting any again.

Potter looks _very_ annoyed. “What?”

“I asked,” Draco starts but Potter sneers that he heard what he asked.

“So?” Draco says.

“What makes you think you’re in any position to make demands?”

Draco doesn’t even humor him with an answer; he only smirks knowingly and it wipes a part of Potter’s attitude problem away. They’re basically discussing terms but it’s a tip-toe show for Draco. Anytime, Potter could just decide he wants the thrill of fists against soft tissue more than he wants to get off, and the moment he does, Draco’s shit out of luck. Draco cannot push too far, but at the same time he doesn’t want to demand too little. Neither does he want to give back all control he’s gained over his own situation.

Sex has been a normal part of his life since he was fifteen and Blaise figured out he should totally get it on with Draco. Sex is not something he’s afraid of; not even here, with Potter. Whatever happens, it will not _be_ normal, it will not be _sex_ , but it will be another sort of abnormal than this has been so far, an abnormal of which Draco already feels much more at ease with.

Then Potter makes up his mind. “Fine. You can have it your way this time.” It sounds like Potter will have it _his_ way _next_ time but whatever kind of shit show that will be, Draco decides not to think about right now. Instead, he reaches for Potter’s fly, without letting his eyes slip away from the other man’s. It looks like Potter is really giving him what he said he’d give him: Draco’s way this time. So Draco runs his own course; unzipping and pops the button open without ever looking down to see where he’s going, knowing almost precisely where to go anyhow. Potter lets a tiny moan escape his lips when Draco reaches into his pants and palms him through the thin layer of covering. Draco thinks Potter’s easy. Hot by nothing, moaning by touch not even skin to skin. Potter’s eyes decidedly flicker, towards Draco's mouth mostly and Draco is not sure whether it is because he’s silently expecting what is to come, or if he considers kissing him.

Sex, is one thing; it can be impersonal, satisfying needs and wants but kissing, kissing is intimate. It bears meaning, significance that detached sex does not. But he holds Potter’s gaze steady even as he settles onto his knees and it is Potter who looks away first, by closing his eyes and turning his face to the roof.

At some point, Draco had learned that if you look someone in the eye for over six seconds, it means that you either want to kill them, or fuck them. Draco’s undecided, to his own nauseation, on which he wants to do to Potter at this time.

~~

Potter must be drunk or high, or both, because he’s on the ground beside Draco, rummaging in the dark for Draco’s body and then he says, “I want to fuck you,” when Draco spittingly ask what the hell he’s doing. It’s in the middle of the bloody night, Draco was just asleep and now he has Harry freaking Potter, who wants to get down and dirty, propped up in his face. Draco feels confused more than anything, but he seems to have the advantage here, so he follows a plan he set up long ago.

Draco thinks that Potter really must be intoxicated of some sort because it doesn’t take Draco much to quite literally overpower the Golden Boy, twisting him around so that he practically lays with his back to Draco’s chest and getting the excess chains around his throat. Then Draco tightens the metal leash and Potter starts choking.

This has been the main reason for why Draco has slept close to the canvas; that if he would ever get one of the trio to get close enough, with a wand, he would’ve had enough chain to lay it on them like this. This, is not the way he’d planned to use the scheme, because Potter doesn't seem to have his wand, but once here, he can might as well go with it.

“My rules,” Draco whispers as Potter struggles. “My rules, or you’re going to wish you never placed that extra Muffliato spell because no one will come to your aid when I choke you to death right here, right now.”

It’s interesting to hear Potter crying “yes, yes, your rules” when he cannot breathe properly, so just for the sake of it, Draco tugs a bit harder before he lets go. Potter manages to promise before he’s released. Once Draco has let him go, he acts like the choking interruption _never_ happened, like they just talked themselves into this _arrangement_.

Potter twists around, close but not touching, and asks, “What do you need?”

Draco takes a breath. He's doing this. “Lubrication.”

“What do _I_ need?” Potter asks then and he doesn’t even have the decency to sound embarrassed that he seemingly doesn’t know these things.

Hidden by the darkness, Draco looks condescendingly at this virgin boy and thinks that the only thing he could give Draco, is a headache. “Nothing,” he says.

He might nod, Draco’s not sure but soon Potter moves away, and Draco doesn’t understand why he crawls around on the floor before the other man whispers “ _Lumos_ ” and his stolen wand lights up a few decimeters from his hand. Draco’s stomach bottoms out when he sees it, because it was right there, inside of his zone of reach, if only he’d known to look for it. But then Potter grabs it and it is simply out of reach once more.

The disappointment soon settles into numb acceptance. “Clean me,” Draco says and he can practically feel a layer of dust disappear from his skin. “And you.” There’s a small whoosh and then Potter whispers his next spell. A vial flies gently into Draco’s hand. It feels like reality.

“Undress me,” he says.

“And me?” Potter asks.

“Unless you want me to do it for you.” But Draco says it in such a way that makes it clear that Potter will do it his goddamned self. Surprisingly, he doesn't unclothe himself with magic. Draco would’ve thought that the desperation in him would surpass such trivial matters and be done with it already, but it seems Draco will never understand fully the intricate workings of Potter’s mind.

When Potter moves to nox his wand, Draco tells him to keep it glowing. “It’ll make it easier.”

And it will. It’s not like the faint glow makes the room light, or easy to see in, but instead of darkness, faint light will be a lot easier to navigate through.

When Potter comes forward, Draco silently indicates where he wants him and Potter sits down, on Draco’s sleeping blankets and back against one of the wooden pillars of the tent. There’s tension in the air, a heat Draco’s not used to and there’s a sort of expectancy that he’s never felt. It doesn’t _feel_ like the same Potter who beats him even if he knows well that it is. This feels like a younger man, a real seventeen-year-old, who’s just gonna get what he wants so he’s as compliant as a puppy. It makes it both easier, and more difficult.

Draco decides to make his way onto Potter’s lap before starting, telling the other man to be still before he does so. The clearest reminder that this is not just a teenager who’s horny, is the chains that rustle as Draco moves. This is also a prison, this is a part of a sick game, this is not actually Draco’s choice.

There’s nothing ceremonial about it; Draco simply pours some of the contents of the vial onto his fingers and makes himself ready, his breathing turning more portioned than he would've liked and he can see Potter drawing his eyebrows together.

He asks, “What are you-”

But Draco cuts him off with a, “Be quiet,” and the other man surprisingly complies. The quietude is not the silent sort; Draco’s breathing is too loud and Potter doesn’t say anything but yet it feels like all of him is _humming,_ not a song but more like a vibration that runs through him, shakes his bones, draws out the sweet waves of lust that _waiting_ is sure to produce. Draco wants him to stop that. He wants him to realise that he doesn’t want this at all, that Draco can’t give him what he’s yearning for. It seems Potter believes that he can, despite Draco’s best efforts of willing it the other way.

“Sit back,” Draco says and gives Potter a light push backwards as he takes a hold of Potter’s shoulder to support himself.

Potter surprises him into a halt by asking, “Can I hold you?”

Draco wants to crazily laugh at the absurdity that this situation presents. Potter asking such a question after these past couple of weeks of him putting his hands on Draco unmercifully, and he expects an honest answer now because Draco is fairly certain that if he says no, Potter will not as much as graze him. Instead of laughing, he takes Potter’s hands and he puts them on his hips and makes sure by the way he leaves them there, that it’s clear they should _stay_ there. And Potter seems to get the message.

Draco takes a moment to breathe. This is not _his_ first time. This is wrong, but he can decide in what way it goes. He tells himself, he can practically decide how long it lasts; he knows this well enough.

More liquid from the small bottle.

Another breath.

He sinks down on Potter’s cock.

“Holy Jesus fuck, Mary and _Christ_ ,” Potter says, leaning his forehead against Draco's bare chest. Draco cannot feel his lips against his skin but he can feel the breath coming out of the Golden Boy’s mouth as he tries to get accustomed to having Draco all around him. Draco takes the time to get accustomed to Potter inside him. Intrusive, in more ways than one; a lot to take, in more ways than one.

When Draco starts moving, his body reacts in ways his mind does not. His body thinks that this is just another roll in the hay, that he likes it, that he should bloody enjoy it and it gives him all the proper tools to do so. But his body doesn’t understand what put him here in the first place, that he still bears shackles around his feet, that this is Potter’s choice and not Draco’s, that he wouldn’t be here if he could just leave.

He cannot will himself to cool down, especially not as Potter’s fingers press into his hips with the intent of steadying rather than keeping in check, and the moans he doesn’t care to tone down, simply because he doesn't have to. Draco doesn’t want to be affected by any of it, but he is, so what he does is make sure that he’s fucking to get Potter off, not himself. It’s another way of doing it, a way he’s not very used to but Potter is vocal enough to make it almost effortless to set the rhythm, to quicken it.

Potter is close, the speed is too good and the angle hits too right, when Draco doesn’t manage to hold back completely and his body decides that _it feels good, Draco, tell the world._ It’s more whining than anything else, but he can see Potter’s eyes widen, his own sounds turn raw and unhinged.

He comes.

Draco stops moving.

Potter lets his head rest against the pillar, and gasps with eyes closed when Draco slips him out of his body, the emptiness uncomfortable and with weak knees, he doesn't move further than settling down where he is.

His cock falls heavy against Potter’s lower stomach, pulsating with need.

The other man breathes heavily, opens his eyes and looks down. “You're…” Potter starts but doesn’t continue, although he begins moving his hand from Draco’s hip and towards his front.

“You,” Draco says in his coldest of voices, “will not touch me.”

Potter’s hand goes still around Draco’s thigh and even just there, it does more than Draco wants it to. He moves away, out of Golden Boy’s lap, out of his reach, out of the way, but he cannot move away from his own body and he wishes that he could. He will live with the discomfort of not coming while being as hard as he is, because there’s just _no way…_ Not here, not like this, no.

There’s impossible for Draco to know whether the Golden Boy is ashamed, stunned or simply too fucked, but he doesn’t say a single thing as finally moves to get up and dressed. His movements look erratic and almost confused and Draco wonders if maybe he’s… regretting it. If maybe now afterwards, with his sense intact, lust no longer seeping into every vein, maybe he thinks that this was a bad idea. Draco wills himself to stop giving into such thoughts.

“You might want to clean me again, and put my clothes back on,” Draco reminds him before it’s too late. “I can’t really do it myself.” He shakes the chain and its rattle is enough to break Potter into reality of things and Draco is dressed a second later. Draco’s grown fairly used to the darkness by now, and even if he can’t see much still, he can make out that Potter is looking at him. And if Draco is not mistaken (which he thinks that he’s not) the look on the other man’s face is the same one he’d given Draco after the first time he’d slapped him, a look of realisation, of a newfound understanding of oneself; which can only mean that _this,_  without a doubt, will happen again.

~~

And it does.

~~

The redhead sticks his face through the canvas, days later, and then he steps inside in a gawky manner.

“Hermione told me it’s been… um, better for a while so...” Draco doesn't respond other than raising a brow and Weasley just walks in further and awkwardly levitates over the food he’s brought.

“What’s this destroyed locket you keep talking about?” Draco asks instead. It’s beyond Draco that they _still_ talk about that thing and he has yet to figure out _why_.

The Weasley looks amused. “Betcha you already know all of You-Know-Who’s horcruxes, you ain't’ gonna fool me by playing dumb.”

The word is not unfamiliar, Potter had used it a lot back when he still asked questions in between his blows, but Draco doesn’t know what it is. “Horo-what again?”

With a dismissive gesture, Weasley answers, “Please, you can just keep it to yourself, rather than trying to make it seem like you know nothing.” Draco, in this case as well as many others, knows nothing. So he starts eating and Weasley starts doing something else in the corner. He’s not here very often, Draco thinks he’s too repulsed by Potter’s usual ways. They go about in silence, Weasley doing whatever he’s doing and Draco eating but it’s weird to have company, especially this redhead.

As Draco scrapes the last of his meal off the plate, he casually asks, “Why aren’t you and Granger… How shall I put it... Boning?”

There’s a crash, and when Draco looks up, the ginger is as red in his hair as in his face. “That’s none of your bloody business!” he hisses.

Draco nods. “So you aren’t, good to know.”

Weasley looks like Draco hit him in the face. _“‘Good to know’?”_

“I better know the gossip, don’t I, if I’m going to try to get into her pants?” Draco fires off a grin with that and the Weasley boy takes a step forward.

“You little-”

Had it not been for the shackles and the fact that Draco no longer has a wand, he would’ve done nothing but now Draco holds his hands up, quickly adding, “Hey, hey, hey! Weasley! It was a joke!”

The other man fakes a laugh. “Yeah, well, not a funny one.” He turns away from Draco again, to start picking up the things he dropped, muttering, “You’re literally asking for a beating.”

“Thought I could mix it up a little.”

The other man looks inept for a second, before he asks, “Are these the kinds of things you say to rile him up as well? Tell him how much you want to sleep with his gir- sleep with my _sister_?”

Draco simply states, “I don’t have to say anything to him to make him want to hit me.” It is true, but there are still quite a number of thing he _has_ said. Most of them snarky remarks over the fact that Potter is wasting his time.

“But sometimes I tell him that he wants to bone _me_ , and that seems to have the opposite effect.”

“What?”

“Oh, c'mon now, Weasley, don’t pretend you don’t know what’s going on in here when Potter doesn’t want the two of you to join in.”

“I don’t... What are you talking about, Malfoy?”

“You don’t… See, this is exactly the way I’m feeling whenever anyone of you tells me I supposedly know about things I have no knowledge of. Savor this feeling for me, and maybe it’ll get into your thick skull, that I have absolutely nothing to offer you.”

“Back it up, Malfoy, are you telling me that he…?”

“Yes, well isn’t it obvious? And I must say, I frown upon you thinking sexual exploitation is a _less_ acceptable method than an Unforgivable Curse. At least, giving him that doesn’t hurt me.”

Weasley looks stunned and he looks at Draco like he’s never seen him before. Draco has no idea what is going on, and despite knowing that Potter probably kept their unruly arrangement for himself, he would have actually thought that the other’s would anyway figure it out. Literally, what else could Potter do that didn't leave Draco hurt? What other conclusions have they drawn since Draco’s face stopped being a bruised mess? What in Merlin's name do they think him and Potter are up to in here? Then Weasley literally runs outside.

Soon thereafter, Draco cannot avoid hearing Weasley’s voice as he yells, _“Are you fucking Malfoy?”_

Draco cannot pick up the Golden Boy’s answer, but that Hermione calls out “Ron!” in a shocked tone. A couple of seconds later, it is “ _Harry,”_ that escapes her mouth and now it holds an even more bone-shaking desperation.

“Don’t you have any limits? We have delayed our plans for the chance of getting Malfoy to tell us things of importance, we should’ve been to Lovegood a long time ago, but we’ve stayed, we have stayed because you persuaded us that was what we needed to do. And you beat him cut and bruised, you curse him into a pathetic pile if a human being; and now, you’re also taking sexual advantage of him? We thought you’d understood what kind of line you were crossing when you practically killed him with your own two hands but now you’re telling us that Harry Potter didn’t wake up from this monster of a person he’s become, now you’re not just telling us to sit idly by as you torture the son of a bitch for information, but now you’re also telling us that we should just be _okay_ with you raping him, _just for fun,_ too?!”

“ _He_ _offered!_ ”

But Weasley dismisses the defense like it isn’t a defense at all by proclaiming, “He’s chained to the bloody wall, Harry, he’s not in a position to _offer_ _anything!_ ”

“You don’t underst-”

“Sod off, Harry, I understand _perfectly well._ It is you that has gone completely off the wall, who acts like that locket is still pressing around your neck, like you cannot handle it, but, fuck, you cannot blame _this_ on somethings _that’s not here anymore,_ you cannot blame this on anyone else but yourself and I especially won’t allow you to blame it on the man we’re unlawfully keeping _locked up_.”

The weasel storms in mere seconds later, looking anywhere but at Draco as he paces around and when he finally sits down on the lone chair, his hair mussed and his chest heaving, he looks nowhere but Draco. It’s not as uncomfortable as it should be, because there’s no malice in his gaze, no pity, no anger. At least not targeted towards Draco. The other man has not been in here a lot since the Cruciatus event. Draco has thought of him as cowardly for that, but now this is the second time today he’s here and even if Draco can’t say that he likes the ginger fool, to have him here, now, feels almost like solidarity. Like Weasley is owning up to what he’s a part of, like he takes responsibility. He might not stop what is happening, just like Granger doesn’t, but Draco thinks that maybe, just maybe, it is this man’s humanity that will save him in the end anyway.

Weasley still sits on that chair, staring at Draco, when Potter finally shows up. It makes Draco wary. It’s been awhile since they’ve had an audience and even if Draco knows he can suck cock with company, he’s not so sure that is an option for Potter, especially not after his and his best friend’s latest exchange of words. Draco realises he’s going to have to take a full beating again, when he indicates the immovable redhead by a nod in his direction. Potter barely turns his head.

“Do you remember,” he says when Draco takes his position on the ground in front of him, “what he called Hermione, all those times? What intent was behind that word?”

The statement is clearly not targeted towards Draco, but it’s Draco’s gaze that Harry holds.

“Do you remember,” he says again, louder, “when he stomped on my face, breaking my nose? Do you remember that he led Death Eaters into Hogwarts, do you remember him _being_ a Death Eater himself? Do you remember that Dumbledore is dead because of him?” Potter is working his own anger up, and then he suddenly turns away from Draco, and walks up to Weasley.

“Do you remember… Do you remember that he tried to kill me?!”

“Harry,” he says and it sounds almost like a warning.

“DO YOU?” Potter yells and Weasley stands at the words. With his face twisted in such outrage that Draco shies away as he marches up to Draco and clocks him so hard that it sends him sprawling, backwards, onto his back.

Weasley is quick to move to him again, fisting one hand in Draco’s shirt as Draco covers his face with his arms and then punch after punch is distributed on top of them by a crazed out Weasley. It’s chaos because this has never happened before, Draco doesn’t know how to be beaten by him, he doesn’t know how to make it stop, he doesn’t know what to do to ease the pain, he doesn’t know for how long it will go on. He’s crying before the third hit is even fully presented and after that, there’s just no stopping it.

“Fuck,” Draco can hear Potter murmur despite the weasel’s heavy breathing, despite his own heart in his ears. “Ron.”

He hears it, and it sounds desperate. And when he says it again, “ _Ron,”_ it is all but calm. Then everything stops and Draco opens his eyes to be staring at Potter rather than Golden Boy’s best friend and he immediately lowers his arms, hides them behind his back. There’s no way he’s stepping outside of Potter’s lines on a day like this. Draco follows Potter’s wide gaze as it moves from Draco to Weasley and Draco realises that Potter must’ve dragged the other man off of him. He now stands a few paces away, catching his breath, staring at Potter.

“See that,” he says and points towards Draco and Potter looks. “All you had to do was tower over him and he let go of all self-deprecations. He shielded himself from me, but to you, he flakes out, delivers what is expected.” Potter’s hands have come to grab at Draco’s shirt, clumsy and disorienting, as Weasley continues. “Do you see now, Harry? What he only does is choose to play your game, where you’ve made it abundantly clear what happens if he doesn’t. He chooses to surrender in the single way he can because he _doesn’t know anything._ He can’t provide you with what you want so he gives you, wholeheartedly, what he thinks you need and when that is _this_ , that is not a choice of a man with much to choose from, that is simply not a choice at all. He’s a monkey in a cage, dancing for scraps rather than sitting still and facing the whip. He cannot _offer_ to give you anything like this, do you understand that, Harry?”

Draco can say for absolute certain that he’s never before been glad to be called a monkey.

It is from an unexpected party that Draco gets support, but it isn't unwelcome. It’s disgusting that he feels gratitude from a man that minutes before was pounding his fists on Draco’s body, but he knows that Ron Weasley will never again lay a finger on him, and _should_ the redhead ever do it, Draco will have an honest chance to hit back; fighting as equals.

Potter looks lost; his gaze darting everywhere, his hands still grasping at Draco’s clothes and he opens and closes his mouth over and over and over. It’s his eyes that really give him away. His face looks shocked, confused, but his eyes hold a deeper understanding of the words that Weasley laid on him. Draco holds still, lets everything unfold, lets Potter see him and gives Potter time to _see him._

Weasley stays for a long time after Potter leaves, staring at the wall and breathing. Completely still. When he finally moves at all, it is to look Draco in the eye.

“I’m sorry,” he says. Draco cannot remember that he’s heard anything so sincere leave the weasel’s mouth. “You deserved one punch, maybe two, from me and nothing more. I wish you to believe me when I say, I didn’t do it for pleasure.”

Draco has seen enough violence to know the difference between a man who is coaxed and dragged into its open arms, and a man that thrives in jumping into it himself. Which is why he nods towards the freckled boy, and why Draco will not hold this particular thing against him.

~~

He feels quarantined after that, mostly because he practically is. Food appears rather than it being taken to him and none of the three come to see him for what must be two days time. It’s excruciating, not knowing what is happening, or what's going to happen. The trio do not talk loud enough for Draco to hear, they’ve spelled their tent or they do not talk at all; Draco’s not really sure which is the most plausible scenario but for a while it makes him think that they've all simply left. Then food is presented and his panic is for that moment subdued.

The Gryffindor three all make their way inside his tent, together but clearly not as a group. It looks like they’re back to being separated but this time divided into two rather than three. Granger and Weasley have taken a side which Potter has not, or maybe Potter has but the others are too angry with him anyway. They come quiet and once settled in the room, they remain such for an eternity. Waiting for Snatchers to jump them, for the world to fall upon them, for them to wake up and to be back at Hogwarts; anything not to have to be _here._

“This is clearly an unsustainable situation.” It is Granger that has taken the word, and she rises to her feet as she does so. Draco, who was sitting as well, stands up because he believes this will lead to something, something different and he’s not yet sure if it’s good or bad.

“We have realised,” she continues and Draco gives her a _look_ that makes her change the wording to, “We’ve always known, that this arrangement was only temporary, that it was not something we wanted but something we deemed necessary in our… hunt for a future better than the one that in this moment lies ahead.”

“You’re using an awful lot of pretty words,” Draco says and Granger nods nervously.

“We have always known that doing _this,_ ” and she indicates loosely towards Draco, “would be unforgivable.” Draco wants to be surprised by the fact, or that she’s wording it, but he knows these Gryffindors (even if he wishes that he couldn’t say it) and he slowly realises that maybe the day he thought would dawn upon him in the first week of capture, has finally come.

“However,” Granger proceeds, “we did think it was going to be valuable. We thought that you were important, because, to be fair, you’ve always made yourself look to be. We should not have fallen so easily into deceit like that, and I can with certainty say that after the last few weeks we’ve put you through, I believe there would have never been a single thing you could have answered to our questions, that could have ever made this alright.”

“We fucked up,” Weasley says.

“Big time,” Granger continues. “We let our pre construed thoughts cloud our judgment, we did not think we had time to stop for a second and to really think about what a seventeen-year-old boy did on the other side of the enemy lines, and what he might suffer from being there. And then we made him suffer even further.”

“Where are you going with this?” Draco asks, throat dry. For some reason, he feels like it should be confidence heightening to hear Granger say these words, because they seem to mean that this period of his life is over but the tension makes him question whether his _life_ is as well.

It is Potter who raises his wand and when he lowers it, the chains from around Draco’s ankles, are gone. He takes a couple of seconds to look at them all. In the dim light of the magical lanterns they’ve brought, they all look tired. They don’t look afraid, per se, but more like expectant. What will happen now? Draco finds he doesn’t care what they think. He wants to go out.

Said and done, he’s reached the entrance before his brain has fully processed that he’s walking, sprinting more like it, towards it and he’s inhaling the soft, forest night air a second later. He takes another few steps while finally outside, stopping more because he wants to raise his gaze to see the sky rather than wanting to stand still. The stars are visible. Draco can see stars, for the first time in what feels like forever. He locates his own constellation in the sky and it’s comforting, it is soothing that they’re both still there; Draconis in space and Draco here on earth.

The trio follows him out. They say nothing and once Draco has twisted around to face them, Draco thought he would look at them differently. He finds himself surprised when he does not. It’s still Granger, the intelligent, know-it-all she’s always been; the Weasley number six, the gangly, loose-lived tosser; and then there’s _Potter._ Just as dumb as the day Draco met him, just as oblivious to the world and how to act in it. Harry Potter who has made Draco’s life a living hell for ages, who has never been able to - even before all of this - leave Draco alone, who Draco once _chose_ and who didn’t choose Draco _back._ Draco doesn’t know what would’ve happened if that handshake had taken place, if they actually had become friends at eleven.

But what he knows for certain, is that he would’ve not survived this, what Potter has put him through, if it hadn’t been just that, _him,_ who had done it. _That_ is also fucked up, Draco understands, but it doesn't hide the fact that Potter has clearly always had a different place in Draco’s brain than anyone else and that he’s also never had the same rules applied to him as other people. Draco will never tell him that he saved Draco’s life; he simply doesn’t think the Golden Boy is worth knowing that, when he in the same process tried his best to take it away.

Back in the real world, Potter looks to the others before he puts away his wand and changes it to _Draco’s._ He holds it out, as if to give it back, but he's several steps away so Draco can’t just reach out and take it. He can _feel it_ , though. In his fingertips, in his hand, in his whole fucking body, he can feel the wand yearning to be in his possession again and when he raises his hand, the wand loses all self-control and flies itself safely in between his fingers. It’s a rush, almost like the first time he ever held the wand in Ollivander’s and the first thing he does, is cast stars. They hit Granger’s barrier and shudder off, but the _magic,_ the _life_ soaring back into him is uncomparable. Then he does as many spells he can possibly think of, as fast as he can. He cleans himself, he lights the fire, he slices a tree in two, he explodes a rock, he levitates all leaves on the ground, he fixes a hole in his pants, he… points the wand towards Potter.

For some reason, the trio looks at him like he’s gone apeshit. It takes Draco a second to realize their naïvitey.

“None of you thought about the pent up magic in my veins, did you?” When they do not answer, Draco continues, “It’s not very common wizards of adult age are separated from their magic for a long time, you know. I can’t say exactly, but I’d make an educated guess that it’s been maybe four weeks? I started feeling this _surge_ after less than two.” He still holds his wand pointed towards Potter, but none of the three make a move to reach for theirs. He thinks that maybe they’re brave to rest their faith in the man they’ve made their best efforts to break, to accept whatever is coming for them but mostly it just feels stupidly heroic and like dull martyrship. Lowering his wand, Draco proclaims, “How the three of you will save the Wizarding world, I have no idea, but I will pray to my lucky star that you all grow some sense before you try to.” Then he marches away to go sit by his self-made fire.

He sits there for ages; burning leaves and twigs, and sometimes himself, just because he can. He can choose his pain, for real, he can make it go away. It’s liberating, it tastes like _freedom._ He’s still pretty sure he cannot get out of this place without Granger allowing it, but he doesn’t have enough of a plan to leave yet. His last plan was heading for Gloucester, to Pansy, and despite not having any lasting means from the beatings he’s endured, without food or water, he won’t make it far. He decides that this is still the best place to stay, with the trio, even though he’s not particularly keen on the idea.

As per usual, Granger is the one to bring him food. Not usual, though, is the plate she brings for herself. She makes an awkward gesture, a silent question if she’s allowed to sit down and Draco hesitates for a second before he nods. They dine in silence, the men not joining. Draco tries to heat some bread on the flames but the pieces mostly just catch fire or taste burnt.

“You have to-” Granger says after watching him fail a couple of times. She doesn’t explain further before she brings out her wand and makes the flames disappear, only the pink-orange glow of the coal she leaves. She tells him to try now and Draco, skeptically, does. The witch is right of course, the next piece Draco makes fly over the ember is almost toasted once it reaches his mouth.

It feels heavenly to eat something warm again and aloud he says, “I wish I had butter.”

“I wish we’d never found you.” She already looks at him when he glances at her and then she gets up and leaves. She has not enjoyed a second of Draco’s captivity, she has thought it disturbed since day one, of course she wishes that. And to the surprise of no one, so does Draco.

~~

Weasley says it like it is. “I don’t like you.”

“The feeling is mutual.”

His voice is clear when he the continues, “But you didn’t deserve… any of this.”

Draco says, “Tell me something I don’t already know, Weasley.”

It looks like he can’t, because he stands there, soundless for a few minutes before he leaves again.

~~

He is last, the Golden Boy, to confess his sins and seek redemption but he begins better than Weasley because he asks permission to come in and awaits positive confirmation before he does so. Draco transfigures the table into a bed and ignores Potter until he takes up talking again, which takes him a long time. Draco doesn’t know how this will play out, because he doesn’t know what Potter thinks, how he feels, what he might want to say. The thing is, Draco doesn’t even know what he would want him to say. That he’s sorry? That he didn’t mean to go where he inevitably went? That he’s going to make it up to him, somehow? Nothing feels remotely true, remotely plausible because Potter has known from the very beginning what he’s been doing and yet he’s kept doing it. That Weasley snapped him into reality that all he did was ugly and sinister, Draco is sure it was not the first time the Golden Boy had thought of such. It might have been the first time he’d understood what it meant, for real, to see his best friend perform the same sort of routine, and to be faced with the fact that his best friend also didn’t think that he was the person he… evidently is. Draco could go a lifetime thinking about Harry Potter because of all the things he has laid upon Draco through the years, and this last month.

“Do you… want… to move tents?” It’s a feeble attempt at reconciliation, of telling Draco he can be human again. Draco doesn’t want Potter to allow it, Draco’s going to allow himself.

“No,” he says and looks at Potter. “It’s not been as much the place, rather its people, that has made my stay what it has been.” The Golden Boy hides well what looks like disappointment mixed with relief, but Draco has had years to learn the tells. He wonders, once Draco has left them, once the war is over and if they are still alive then, if they’ll ever see each other again. In what context that would be. If he will look at Potter and allow himself to see a monster, or if he will forever just be the twisted Golden Boy Draco sees right now.

Draco finds that he’s not scared of him. The man has chosen, chosen to let Draco go, to give him back his life, and Draco truly believes that in this moment Potter will honor that, stick to that, so when he takes a couple of steps forward, Draco doesn’t move. His heart doesn't even speed. Draco doesn't feel angry, or resentful, he feels tired. Exhausted really. It’s been hours since they cut his chains and it was already nightfall when they did.

Draco cocks his head and silently asks what it is that Potter came here for.

And Potter, with his head hanging, gaze surrendered to the ground, drops to his knees.

“Do it,” he says.

“Do what?” Draco asks.

Potter looks up, determined. “ _Anything_.”

“I have no desire to inflict any of the things you have put me through onto anybody, ever.”

Potter looks down on the ground, stating, “You should. You should want to, and you should do it to me.”

“What I should or shouldn’t do, is none of your fucking choice. I will decide for myself, that's why I’m not in shackles anymore, is it not?”

“Yes,” Potter says but Draco can just _hear_ the “but” he doesn’t say.

“So get up, and get the hell out; I don’t ever want you to beg me to relive my trauma through my perpetrator’s eyes and hands. What I want, is to be left alone.”

Potter stays on his knees for a minute more, not defying Draco’s wish because of cruelness, but because he doesn't seem to understand what he did wrong, what he had asked of Draco and why it had been a mistake. When he rises, Draco almost feels sorry for him, even though he knows he shouldn’t. Even though he doesn't want to.

~~

Sleep comes quickly but passes by uneasily. Draco wakes more often than he’s ever done and he starts thinking as soon as he does, starts to count all the things that are and aren't. He’s not in chains. He has his wand. He’s still with the trio. He’s not a prisoner. He has a bed. He’s not hungry. He has been taken advantage of. He will never forget what has happened to him. He is alive. He… is alive.

He falls asleep again, knowing full well that the next day will present different challenges, most of them regarding his own position in this small group of people when he is basically there on equal terms. And the day will come to be one of many energy sucking conversations.

~~

It starts simple. Potter asking him after a joint, very tense, very awkward breakfast, if he doesn't want to leave. Tells Draco that they could even help him get somewhere, as long as it’s not dangerous for them. Draco thinks of Pansy again, and realises that he’s not even thought about the fact that she, most probably, is in _school._  Just because Draco couldn't go back, just because the trio decided not to, didn't mean that no one went back there for their two last semesters. But he must go somewhere; the trio has finally decided on leaving, going to Lovegood’s and seek themselves elsewhere after they’ve talked to him. Draco doesn’t know where to go.

“Yes,” he tells Potter. “Sure I want to leave.” And when his answer isn't more elaborated, Potter doesn’t push it, doesn’t ask why he hasn’t gone already.

“What _is_ a horcrux?” Draco asks and Potter looks at him in astonishment, like he still believes Draco only pretended not to know.

“Ehm,” he starts, “it’s sort of objects that one stores… pieces of one’s soul inside of.”

“What.”

“He’s not only power hungry, he also wants to live forever,” Potter says and it’s only because he doesn’t look to be joking that Draco even remotely believes him. “Dumbledore thought you had to kill someone to make one, and he also thought that he has seven. Or well, now he should only have four left.”

Draco only stares at him. “Are you telling me there are pieces of the Dark Lord’s soul, scattered around the earth?”

“Oh, no,” Potter says and Draco has time to breathe before he continues, “we believe he’s so full of pride that he’s keeping all of them in England. But we’ve destroyed a few already.”

“The locket,” Draco says because if it’s one word he’s heard a lot these past couple of weeks, it’s been _destroyed._ Potter nods. “Where are the others? _What_ are they?”

Potter gives him a look. “Do you really think they would’ve agreed to keep you here if they didn’t believe you’d be able to provide us with that exact information?”

Draco considers what he’s just learned. That Voldemort cannot die, at least not until this pack of Gryffindor’s has killed every last bit of him and they don’t even know what they’re looking for or how to find it. It feels… hauntingly discouraging. For the first time, Draco wishes that he’d been closer to the Dark Lord, then maybe he could've actually provided some decent information, maybe he could’ve helped. He thinks, maybe he still could. But Potter interrupts his thoughts before he’s developed that specific one further.

“Malfoy, about all of this… I’m not exactly sure how any of it came to be, how I went _there_ and then you, and I and it went _differently._ I just know that it happened and it… it just shouldn’t have. I shouldn’t have, a lot of things I shouldn’t have. I… didn’t…” and his voice turns into nothing but a mere whisper as he says, “...I don’t think I wanted to stop.” Then he sobers and sits up straight. “I don’t know why I just told you that, that’s horrible. I don’t know what I was thinking, now or then, I’m fucked up. I shouldn't… I don’t want to.... I’m sorry, ignore me.”

“You did it the wrong way,” Draco declares, heart feeling tight in his chest.

“What?”

“You did it the wrong way, but it’s not exactly forbidden to want it.” Potter stares at him, and Draco cannot look at him at all. But he wants Potter to understand that his desires can be met, if treated with care rather than driven by power. He needs him to know, to understand that what he took from Draco, is something he doesn’t have to take from anyone. Because if he doesn’t know, sooner or later he’ll find himself in the same situation he’s been in with Draco, and Draco cannot let anyone else fall into Golden Boy’s hands like that.

“Anything you want. You can want it, you can even have most things without a problem. You… You took one or the other with me. That was the... _agreement._  But there are people in this world who’ll _want_ to _give_ you both. Will want to give it to you freely and you’ll want to accept it. So. The next time you indulge yourself, you _will_ do it consensual. You will ask permission for everything _before_ you do _anything_ and you will, without any explanation needed, respect their choice if they tell you _no.”_

Potter kicks a little in the ground, uncomfortable, and then he admits, “I don’t think I’ll ever go down that road again.”

It’s funny how naïve he is “Oh, you will,” Draco assures him. “And the right partner will enjoy it equally.”

The Golden Boy looks up, meets Draco’s gaze for a second before he looks away again.

Draco asks, “Do you understand that it’s necessary?”

“What is?”

“Consent. If there isn’t consent, it isn't sex. And consent under circumstances that makes it impossible for one party to deny the other, makes it nonconsensual.”

Potter nods once before they both go quiet. Draco watches the Golden Boy, sees him in the light of day, and he thinks that his name doesn't fit him; gold is a soft metal, and Potter stopped being soft quite a while ago. Draco guesses that maybe it suits him in other ways, though, by the way that many people go to great lengths to find him, to have him, to keep him, and many people have been blinded by his name and his previous achievements, on his unwilling status and in that process failed to see what he actually is. A lump. A tiny man who just sort of happened to be something he doesn't feel like himself. Because Potter has never wanted to be the Golden Boy, has he? He doesn't want to be rare, doesn't want to stand out but that is all he’s ever done. Even with Draco, Potter has stood out. The only difference there, has been that _Draco_ has stood out to Potter as well.

There had been a subtle shift, going from giving Potter hell and trying to get him in trouble and wanting Potter to notice that Draco managed well without him, to realising all the strange and petty ways he found to involve Potter in his life despite always believing that he didn’t want him in it, and resenting the fact that he couldn't stop. Then it had been sudden when the fantasies had started and after that, he tried so hard to stay away from him. But then Potter was keeping close instead, making everything so much more difficult. None of these fantasies, however vivid and innovative, has ever played out in the way reality now has. In these fantasies, the end result has always been sex. However much it had been sex full of hate, full of slamming and pulling and clawing and biting, it has always been sex. Draco hasn’t had that here.

“It wasn’t sex,” he says aloud. He doesn’t know if it’s more for him or for Potter.

Potter whispers, “I know.”

“Not one time.”

“I know, I know.” Potter looks him in the eye the second time he says it, his voice sounding almost desperate, and he reaches out towards Draco.

He wasn’t prepared for his own reaction although he’s not at all surprised by it. Draco shies away. The touch of the other man, however well-intended, isn’t going to work, it’s not going to feel right. Maybe, if he did ask first. Maybe if Draco would initiate it. But Potter’s hands on his skin has too many times been connected to things Draco could not do anything about and he’s not sure how to ever be touched by him without replaying all of those events in his mind.

Potter withdraws. Crestfallen. “I won’t hurt you again,” he says, like it’s a guarantee.

Draco narrows his eyes. “You may believe that now, but I’ve _seen_ your soul, _Harry Potter._ You cannot let your mouth make promises your body does not want to keep.”

Potter looks like he wants to protest, but he finds something in Draco’s eyes that makes him stay quiet. It should feel scary that Draco understands that Potter still wants to hurt him, but it feels like settled truth rather than anything else. If he knows it, he knows what to expect and to avoid it. If Potter would be indulged in lies, it would only make both of them wary and at the same time be fooled into some sort of notion that they were both safe from the Boy Who Lived. It wouldn’t have been fair to either of them.

~~

The day progresses into everyone avoiding one another. Draco mostly walks around or sits by the fire, because he can. Him and Weasley finally share a meal and Draco, for some reason, interacts with him. Talks with him. It’s just as much a mystery that Weasley engages in the conversation as well but it feels.... almost comfortable.

“Do you know, the first thing I thought when I saw your ugly mug in the woods?” Draco asks; he doesn't wait for a reply. “I thought: How can it be that I, on the run from the Dark Lord, would be ever so _lucky_ as to stumble on the only wizards in this world who are actively out there, doing Merlin knows what, but all the same, are trying to bring the very person I’m fearing, to his downfall? How _lucky_ am I to see Harry Potter’s best friend after three days of wishing I could find _any_ magical folk? _How_ _lucky am I?”_

“Betcha don believe in luck no more,” Weasley says and Draco snorts. In a different life, him and Weasley would’ve been friends.

In this life, Draco and Weasley would practice quidditch together and play chess, they would bicker and they would always say they didn’t like one another until someone else would question their loyalty and that person would find themselves being wrong.

In this life, Draco and Granger would’ve been study-buddies, and they would’ve friendly competed against each other because in this universe, Draco had never learned the word “mudblood” or taken to use it, in this universe Slytherins and Gryffindors could be friends and in this life, Draco would befriend at least three of them.

In this life, Draco and Potter wouldn’t have changed much. They would still be mocking each other on a daily basis, trying to coax the other into a furious blush, they would follow the other even after curfew, even on forbidden grounds, they would give each other dirty looks and stupid smirks and a little piece of themselves.

In this life, Potter and Draco would’ve been lovers.

Potter drags him back to here and now, to this universe, this real life,  as he says, “They’re not dead.”

“Excuse me?” Draco looks up and he sees not a lover, but a wreck. A ruined man. Not unable to love, but a man who doesn’t know how to.

“Your parents,” Potter explains. “I sent word, and they're not dead.” Draco doesn't know how, when or where but he knows why. It’s an olive branch, one of what he expects to be many. Potter should keep them coming.

“Splendid,” he says flatly, because it will take him a long time to thank Potter for anything, especially when the Golden Boy does things to get into Draco’s good graces. Potter waits a second, then nods and walks off again. Weasley looks after him.

“Don’t forgive him,” he says without turning his gaze to Draco. “Forgiveness will blur the line again.”

Draco turns his head to watch the Golden Boy disappear into the larger tent. “Forgiveness can only be granted those who seek it. Remorse and guilt can look deceivingly similar, Weasley. Don’t confuse one with the other.”

Weasley looks too stunned to answer so Draco gets up and leaves him to his thoughts, to ponder on his best friend’s psyche by himself.

~~

Draco stands back and watches as the trio starts packing. They take their time, because even if they want to get out of here, there’s no real hurry. They’re doing the last bit outside before packing the tents, when Draco decides that he must ask now, or it’ll be too late.

“Do you need help?”

Granger frowns. “Do we need what now?”

Draco gives her a murdering look. “Don’t make me ask again.”

She looks confused for a second, before answering, “I think we’re good.”

“On the hunt,” Draco clarifies. “Help on the hunt.”

That makes all three stop to look at him. Draco looks to Granger, it’s easiest, and she exchanges a glance with the weasel. “I… I think that you’d be an asset, definitely. You’re smart and you may know of things we don’t, just by default and also because you’re… well, _you_. But…” She looks to both of the other’s before bluntly asking, “Do you really want to come with us?”

“No,” Draco says and feigns a nonchalant shrug though he’s wound tight. “I do however, want the Dark Lord dead. I won’t be able to make that a reality on my own and you are the only people I… _know_ who’s going after him.”

It’s quiet until Weasley says, “Okay.”

“I have one condition.” And the other’s looks at him, expectantly, like they had already figured there would be something. Draco turns to Potter and says, “I want you to swear the Unbreakable Vow to me.”

Weasley whistles low, Granger looks baffled and Potter, Potter looks angry.

“Just me?” he asks through gritted teeth.

“Yes,” Draco tells him. “Just you.”

“Why?”

“Why just you? Because the two of them haven’t done what you have. They allowed it to happen, but they haven’t done it, they don’t want to do any of it again. Just you, because the others are of no danger to me, Potter. Why I want you to swear? Because you’re unreliable, you’re undefined, you’re unsure of your limits and you haven’t learned them. Because you’re an explosion waiting to happen and I will not find myself in the crossfire once your patience has burned out.” Draco dares him; he gets all up in Potter's face, so close, so close, and he pushes the boundaries, he pushes the Golden Boy to the edge. He needs to know what will happen, he needs to know if Potter’s instincts will be stronger than his judgment. “Why the Unbreakable Vow? Because not only will it ensure my safety in the future but it will also show to what great lengths you will go on the opposite side of the scales, to reassure me, that you’ve chosen to willingly lay down your life, should you ever again threaten mine.”

More than six seconds pass with their gazes locked and then Potter storms off, a storm cloud of emotions.

Weasley sighs, like he thinks it’s a good idea Draco comes with them but that it won’t happen. “He’ll never agree.”

Looking after the Golden Boy, Draco says, “He will. He will.”

~~

“I don’t have anything to say to you.”

Potter says it before Draco’s even fully entered the trio’s tent and Draco scoffs. “I think you have quite a number of things you’d like to say to me.”

“You always think you know me better than I know myself, don’t you?” Quick, biting; Potter knows Draco is right.

Draco shrugs. “Objective and intelligent observations, if you don’t reach the same conclusions, it only means I was right about you being stupid as well.”

“You’re a piece of shit, how’s that for observation?” Potter barely looks triumphant at his childish jab, Draco defers from rolling his eyes.

“I’m a piece of shit you want to have on your side, because if I recall correctly, you still haven't told me that you won’t do it. Would’ve been easy to just say “not gonna happen” and have me choose a drop-off location. Instead, here we are. Throwing insults like we’re eleven and delaying this hunt even longer. Grow up, Potter. Get over it, own up to your faults and swear you’ll never fall for them again.”

Potter stands up from his bed, a gleam in his eyes that wasn’t there a second ago and he pours out what must be _fears._ “So fucking easy for you to say,” he starts. “You’re not the one who has them pooling under your surface like lava ready to pour over. It’s there, and I can’t do anything about it. It’s not like I can ignore it and it’ll go away; sometime, it _will_ fall over that edge whether I want it or not, whether I’ve promised or not, and if you're _there-”_

Draco says, calmly, “I wouldn’t put you in a position where you would be able to break it.” It might not be the truth. He’s already given Potter means and motivation twice in the last few minutes, but he also will not mend and bend for Golden Boy’s animalistic desires.

“Lucky me,” Potter mutters and Draco thinks that the Golden Boy is testing his patience. He darts forward, grabs Potter’s arm, digs his fingernail into his skin and with a hiss, Potter looks up at him again.

“There’s no such thing as luck, baby,” Draco declares coldly. “It will be me, _choosing,_  for the rest of my life, to not seek revenge or equity upon you. Don’t believe for a second that I don’t know what lies underneath your surface and don’t tell me I don’t know what it feels like, because you have no clue what lies under my skin, how much you’ve broken it and seen it bleed.” He releases his grip, weirded out by himself that he ever took it, and disgusted that he did it for something as trivial as emphasis.

Finally, Potter asks, reluctantly, “What would be your terms?”

Draco takes a breath. “I only have one.”

“Just one?”

“I want you to swear, that you’ll never again, deliberately, physically hurt me.”

Potter stays quiet for a while, thinks this over and then he says, “That’s… oddly specific.”

“That’s the only thing I never want you to be able to do again.”

After a second's hesitation he starts, “You know that-”

“I know what phrasing it like that will leave open, I know what you still will be able to do but for none of those things I want you to die, should you do them.” And by the look on Potter’s face, it is the second time that it really hits him what he’s done, and how greatly it has affected not only him.

It takes Potter a moment; then, he agrees.

~~

With everything packed, the tents disassembled, the quartet gathers in a group: Draco and Potter facing each other, Weasley a bit to their side and Granger acts as their Bonder. It is weird to know that he’ll always and forever be linked to Potter after this, an invisible tie will connect them until one of them dies. Draco wonders if he will _feel_ the bond break if Potter dies, miles and miles away. If he will feel it if Potter dies because he broke his vow.

The witch looks nervous but Potter looks settled. Not happy, but he’s found this is the path he wants to take, the pledge he wants to lay and Draco reaches forward and grabs his arm again. This time, it’s his lower arm, it’s because of a _good_ reason and when Potter does the same, Draco only feels a slight itch to move away.

“Do you swear on your life, Harry Potter, to never again, lay a hand upon Draco Malfoy to hurt him? To never again, deliberately cause him physical pain? To never again, despite pressure from forces external as well as internal, cause him harm? Do you swear this?”

Potter swears.

Draco feels a surge in his stomach; this is it, if he doesn't say anything more now, it will never be possible but despite _everything,_ Draco is not so sure he can let go of it so entirely. So he takes a short breath before he adds, "Unless I want you to."

He cannot see the other two's reactions, because he holds Potter's gaze steady, the other man's eyes wide in surprise and maybe there's guilt somewhere in there but as he clasps his hand firmer around Draco's arm and proclaims, "Unless you want me to," Draco believes he'll eventually get over it. Eventually, he will accept his own actions, he will not be proud and he will not forgive _himself,_  but he will understand completely and in that knowledge, he’ll find Draco has given him salvation, freedom from a life of despair and hiding from himself and he will be thankful rather than regretful. Draco doesn’t owe him that, but he is willing to give it to him anyway.

Draco might never use the exception, but he feels calm and collected after adding it, and a fiery line of magic shoots out of Granger's wand to bind the spell around their wrists. It is the first time Draco has bound himself, but it releases him, it gives _him_ freedom and even if Potter has taken and taken from him, Draco is still glad that Golden Boy gives him this.

The spell is closed with a _swoosh_ and a shot to the heart. Like a thunderbolt; piercing and bright, to suddenly just be gone and leave quietude in its place. Draco doesn’t feel different. But he knows that everything is.

And Potter gives him a nod, before releasing his grip. Granger takes down the wards and the four of them disappear, disapparating with a cracking sound, onto the next step, the next part of their lives; together, wholeheartedly, and ready to defeat anyone who tries to cross their path.

**Author's Note:**

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